Page 53 of The Vampire Castle in the Sky

“ButIdidn’t make the tea,” I whispered, my chest clutching in sudden dread as I raised the teacup to my lips. I took a sip. Itwasbitter. Inexplicably so. “I don’t understand. The Castle made it.”

Then the vision came—a rapid glimpse into the night that was about to unravel. Lightning struck the sky, and the whole roomflashed white. The cup fell from my hand, hot tea spilling across the tulle of my skirt.

“Thea? What is it?” Hector’s voice was an arrow piercing the ringing in my ears. His handsome, worry-stricken face was the last thing I saw before my mind turned dark.

“It’s poisoned.”

20

Hector

Terror sweetens the blood,Father told me once.It calls upon the darkness and all its creatures to devour you. The only way you can fight the darkness is by not being afraid of it.

I tried to be strong like him. I tried not to let fear creep into my heart, not to let the air turn thick with the scent of my despair. But I failed. Disastrously so. I was now made of nothing but terror. I was torn and shaken to the very racking of my soul.

The whole Castle seemed to tremble alongside me, its darkened rooms taking on a new horror edge. Even the moonbeams quivered as they broke off the windowsill and stretched over Thea’s crouched form. She had emptied the contents of her stomach twice already, and with a prick at the tip of her finger, I had injected her with enough venom to extinguish whatever poison floated in her system. Still, the dry heaves persisted, and all I could do now was hold back her hair, murmuring soothing words in her ear as if this could change the fact that she got hurt tonight. She got hurt becauseI’dallowed it. Because I kept her close when I should have sent her away. Because I listened to desire when I should have listened to reason.

My selfishness sickened me, but even self-reproach was a mere wave compared to the ocean of my rage. Rage, I used to think, was a weakness. The dignity of composure was all the strength a man needed to possess. But it came at me now, blood-red and vengeful, and for her alone I would be weak.

“Hector,” Thea panted, slumping on the marble floor, her skirt rising like a twilight cloud around her midriff. “Will you please stop your growling? I’m fine.”

She didn’tlookfine. Her skin was drained of color, and her lips were cracked like unwatered soil. In a panic, I got to my knees next to her and swept her cold hands in mine. “How do you feel?”

“Dehydrated,” she croaked.

Upon a silver tray, a glass of water and a cup of herbal tea materialized next to her. She drank every drop of the water, gasped with relief, and cast me another weary glance. “Breathe, Hector,” she commanded, her voice as hoarse as my insides felt. “I won’t die.”

The mere notion of death in relation to her was a pang in my sternum. It took more strength than I knew I had in me to cling to my fragile composure as I offered her the brew. “Just drink.”

She slipped her palm over the cup, gently pushing it down along with my hand. “I won’t die,” she repeated, more firmly this time. “I saw it.”

My whole body clutched in dread. “What did you see?”

As she turned her face to the side, the small bathroom window painted her profile in a white, ghostly light. I felt like she could vanish any moment now. “I can’t tell you,” she whispered.

“Thea—”

Her head whipped around, black ringlets tumbling over her onyx eyes. “If I tell you, you might do something to prevent it, and you can’t. You mustn’t.”

I looked at her more severely than she could ever deserve. “Do not talk to me about destiny right now.”

Her lips pressed into a thin, stubborn line. I knew that line. I knew it all too well. “It can’t be helped.”

“Yes, it can,” I gritted out, reaching for her shoulders. She tried to slip away, but I hauled her back with an arm around her waist. When she turned her face away, I cupped her jaw and forced her to look at me. “Listen to me.Listen. There is no destiny. Destiny is just another word for life and what you make of it. You have power. Your life is your own, and you decide what happens in it—”

“Hector,” Arawn’s grim voice sounded behind me.

I whirled, hardly able to keep myself from snarling at him. “What was it?”

“Nightshade,” he said, strained with guilt. “I swear it tasted just like any other tea to me.” His gaze darted over my shoulder to Thea, his face looking just as clammy and pale as hers. “It must have been a very small dose. Whoever did this didn’t want to kill you.”

Of course they didn’t want to kill her. Killing her meant coming before the King of Lumia. It meant facing trial, facing execution. What theydidwant to do was scare me. Unravel me. Provoke me. Prove me incapable of holding the balance between our two worlds.

They used to be terrified of my mother’s rage. They used to lower their eyes and bow at the waist in her presence. But I was no Esperida Aventine, and Espen thought I would be so much easier to handle, to manipulate. This was why he wanted to marry me to his precious daughter. So he could have access to the Castle. So he could have power over the man who controlled it.

How blind, how naive, how lethally wrong I’d been to think that the vampires’ fear of change was greater than their thirst forpower. But it was clear now. They hadn’t come to the Castle to appoint me sovereign. They had come to terrorize me out of it.

Arawn’s face hardened as if he’d just realized the exact same thing. “Go,” he said grimly. “I gathered them all in the drawing room. I only let the twins stay in their bedroom. I don’t think this is a conversation you can have in front of children.”

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